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Approving works orders

Most companies approve works orders (WO) in a different order to that in which they were scheduled. This can result in non-optimal use of stock; for example Match-IT may be asking you to kit from two batches of the same material whereas in fact you know you can kit it from a single batch.

The effect of such non-optimal kit lists can be felt in stores. Another result of starting works orders in this way is self-referential returns; meaning that Match-IT will not let you start WO A because it wants a return from WO B (because B was scheduled first). To overcome both of these issues we now always perform a reschedule of a WO when it’s approved. These reschedules ignore all kit tentatively allocated to other WOs waiting to be approved – resulting in optimal kit for the WO that is being approved. The side-effect of this is that if you start lots of works orders in a different order to that in which they were originally scheduled, they will appear to be unkittable – because another WO has ‘stolen’ it’s kit when it was approved.

However such works orders can usually be approved because alternative kit will be found during it’s own approve-time schedule. This behavior is not appropriate to all companies and so there is a default to turn auto-approve scheduling off should you require it. A pending tweak is to extend the kit state flag (K) to include a character implying ‘this WO was kittable but it’s kit has been stolen and now it’s not kittable without an approve schedule’. The above logic also applies to sub-contract purchase orders. The difference is that Match-IT performs the reschedule when the SCPO is created. Again a default exists to disable the auto scheduling.